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beastars-takes · 4 years

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Zootopia Takes: The Power of Really Liking Each Other

Our main event, Beastars Takes, will resume soon, but in the meantime I want to talk about one of my favorite movie relationships:

Has this been talked about to death by other people? Yes. But this is my blog and I write it for free so I can do what I want.

Note: this is not a shipping post--this is just an examination of their canonical relationship in the movie and why it rules.

At first glance, this is your typical enemies-to-friends story. I love those. But while the typical arc tends to involve two characters who can’t stand each other, who eventually develop a grudging respect for one another (often through some kind of shared ordeal) and maybe thaw into actual friendliness at the end. Zootopia packs all of that into the first half--by the midway point they are clearly not just allies, but friends, and by the end of the film they’re inseparable.

It’s important to recognize this isn’t just for the hell of it, or just to be cute--the closeness and trust they build is the linchpin of their success in the final moments of the movie.

All the reasons why, after the jump.

Something I talked about in the previous post was the messaging of Zootopia, and I don’t want to rehash it too much here. It’s a movie about prejudice, and the work it takes to overcome it. A key theme (one that it shares with Beastars, incidentally) is that friendships with those who are different from you are hard--but they are worth it.

Part 1: They Hate Each Other! (Right?)

Now...it goes without saying that when these two first meet, they bounce off each other hard. Each is seeing the other at their absolute worst.

Judy can’t stand Nick because he takes every bit of optimism she has about this world and throws it back in her face. She want to use him as a prop in her vision of an equal society, where “not all foxes” are crooks. He laughs at her. He humiliates her. All he has to do is walk away, but he takes his time. He twists the knife.

For his part, Nick sees a laughably ineffectual bunny who condescends to him and threatens him with jail for the crime of...humiliating her. She may not personally be a threat to him, but she wields the institutional power of the ZPD--a power he has plenty of reason to be afraid of--and she does it irresponsibly.

On first viewing, Nick inarguably wins this exchange. He avoids arrest, reads her to absolute filth and leaves her stuck in cement.

And he makes her really sad. Nice!

But, and I don’t pretend to be the first person to have pointed this out, on second viewing it’s obvious he can guess her story so well because it’s basically his story. The only difference, in his mind, is that he’s accepted the reality that he’ll never be allowed to live the life he wants, while she is still vainly pursuing hers.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but the people I’ve met who have always most pissed me off are the people who remind me of things I hate about myself. The people who seem to embody the flaws I’ve worked to minimize. Nick’s naive hope is what has brought him the most pain in his life. He sees this bunny full of the same naive hope, surmises that she’s facing the same failures he did and yet stubbornly refusing to learn from them. It’s irritating.

Pictured: irritation.

Maybe I am projecting, but if Nick is anything like me, he probably didn’t walk away entirely happy from this exchange. Yes, he “won,” but he was also reminded of everything about himself that he least wanted to think about.

Part 2: They Are Not Very Good at Hating Each Other

So, the thing about Judy is, she is naive. By default, she assumes people are her friend. But she’s not stupid.

Nick assumes she is stupid, not least because she hasn’t wisely given up on her dreams like he has, and...he learns that she maybe not so fun to pick on after all.

So they wind up doing the first part of this enemies-to-friends routine, allies of necessity.

So, naturally, because he is Him, he makes it his mission to torment her.

In fact, we get two whole scenes where all he does he does is watch her struggle and make this face.

The first read of this behavior is that he’s just enjoying the failures of someone he hates. He says as much later. But I would also argue--from a viewer’s perspective--Judy is ridiculously entertaining and charming throughout these encounters. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and it’s hard not to like people like that.

Is there more happening here than just schadenfreude? I won’t pretend to know for sure. But worth considering.

By the time they’re investigating the limousine, his sabotage has diminished into something more like gentle trolling. And you can’t see this face, in context...

...and tell me she isn’t starting to like him, at least a little bit.

He’s also starting to help! By the time they’re past the minor detour of almost being murdered by a mob boss, he’s entirely cooperative, helping her conduct interviews and look for clues. The movie doesn’t call particular attention to this, but it almost did.

Finally, let’s look at Nick’s behavior when they’re being chased by a rabid jaguar. He could have absolutely booked it, with no regard for the cop who was blackmailing him into helping her.

These moments go by so quickly, but they’re hugely revealing of his true character, even before he defends her in front of Chief Bogo.

He picks her up when she falls.

More importantly, when he gets to the skytram, his first instinct isn’t to jump in--it’s to hold the door for her:

He sees she can’t make it, and she even tells him to leave without her. He doesn’t. He holds the door until he can’t anymore, and as a result he’s nearly killed.

Nick is a good boy.

Part 3: They Are Friends Now

She save his life, so he saves her job. This is a key story beat, and it’s a Disney movie, so there’s not a lot of subtlety (except how the specular highlights in Judy’s eyes fade as Bogo asks for her badge--the light literally goes out of her. Go watch).

But it’s such a sweet moment of teamwork--he was contemptuous toward her from the start because she believed in herself. This is the first time she’s simply given up in the whole movie, and he steps up. Because he believes in her now.

And she believes in him! Or, she wants to.

Judy’s supportiveness here is sweet, but it’s also still a little selfish. It’s not that different from their interaction at the ice cream shop, really: she wants to meet a fox who defies stereotypes, who is easy for her to like. Someone who ticks all the boxes to prove her family wrong.

When he starts being more foxy, later--self-identifying as a predator, showing his claws, challenging her--we learn that her supportiveness is conditional.

Am I being too hard on her? Sure. She’s been in bunny country her whole life. She’s new to this and she’s trying. But that’s where she’s at.

But still! They’re friends now. They’re no longer pretending they don’t like each other. Judy’s openly encouraging, Nick is fully in her corner, and we get a few cute sequences where they keep being more and more impressed with each other.

He’s still not above affectionately messing with her, and she’s getting worse at pretending to dislike it.

And he trusts her enough to let her flush him down a toilet...

Which gives us this heartbreaking shot where he thinks she’s drowned. He cares a whole lot about this bunny.

She likes him too! Enough to want to team up on a more permanent basis. This is pretty standard-fare enemies-to-friends stuff now, but considering where we started, and considering they’ve known each other for all of two days? Not bad!

It’s clear this moment means far more to him than it does to her, too. It’s actually taken very little persuading from Judy to get him to step up and be brave and helpful and trustworthy. The fact that he’s turned around and opened up to her so fast suggests he’s been ready for an opportunity like this for his entire life, and never got it. I mean, look at his face.

The foundational flaw in her worldview is still there, though, and it’s about to do almost-irreparable damage to their whirlwind friendship.

Part 5: Fuck!

So Judy gives her press conference, and gives a great example of why police usually answer every question with “the matter is currently under investigation,” or “we’re not prepared to comment further at this time.” Honestly, though, this is on Bogo--I had coworkers who once did some press interviews, and they spent over a week doing media training. They didn’t even break a major kidnapping case. So, you know.

So she repeats some weird race science stuff she assumes is true because someone in a lab coat said it, which is amusingly similar to how race science (or “race realism”) often propagates--people with low-rent doctorates from crappy universities write a bunch of scientifically shoddy material and people say “well, he has a PhD!”

And then Nick has a PTSD flashback? I don’t want to be irresponsible and make an armchair diagnosis, but also...that is absolutely what is depicted on screen.

You’re not immediately “better” after something like this, which is why I cut Nick a bit of slack when he basically blows up their friendship.

Judy...doesn’t get it. It’s completely heartbreaking, because she likes him, and doesn’t understand why he’s mad, and isn’t self-reflective enough to stop and think maybe he has a point. Not until it’s too late. He tests her, and she fails.

Their friendship has always been a little inequal. He’s trusted her with everything, shown her his deepest vulnerabilities. She’s never trusted him completely.

So he leaves.

I don’t want to impugn her professionalism by suggesting she wouldn’t have quit the force if she hadn’t had that friendship-ending fight, but, you know. Maybe.

This is the second time she gives up, and this time he’s not there to pick her up again.

Judy is intensely goal-oriented, and I don’t think she realized what Nick’s friendship meant to her, as the first person in the city who truly believed in her, until it was too late. Judy is sweet and well-meaning but emotional intelligence is not really her strong suit (which is actually cool to see in a female Disney protagonist, imo).

So, while it would have been nice for her to track Nick down immediately and apologize, I think it makes sense for them to spend time apart. Her own self-perception has been shattered, and she needs time to figure out how she went so wrong.

So when she does come back, she delivers one of the best animated apologies I’ve ever seen. Only AtLA compares, in my mind.

Part 6: They Are Much Better Friends Now

Nick forgives her, because of course he does.

(Sidebar--people talk about how he kept her carrot pen the whole time they were apart. He also kept his handkerchief from Ranger Scouts, AND he only wears shirts that match the wallpaper in his mother’s house. He desperately needs a hug.)

Credit to Nick also, who can’t fight and has no police training whatsoever, who has multiple times been almost killed helping her out, now agreeing to help her out again. She’s not even threatening him with jail this time!

We, the viewers, are then rewarded with this great montage of them being best friends.

She’s finally stopped pretending not to be amused by his shenanigans.

(One other sidebar here--Nick is canonically a really gentle character. For all their adventuring, this is only time in the movie he gets physical with anyone: to protect the bunny. Again, he definitely can’t fight and immediately gets smacked across the room. But it’s the thought that counts, right?)

Per the post title, more visual evidence of them really liking each other.

Judy trips on a dead body, and here we get the second time in the movie that Judy tells Nick to leave without her, and he won’t--this time, he refuses explicitly.

Which then gives us the opportunity for the big moment--the culmination of all this care and intimacy and trust.

In order to con Bellwether, she lets him stalk her, and bite her throat. This has been often pointed out, but it’s important--throughout the movie, Judy’s wriggling rabbit nose has been used as a signifier of fear and suspicion. It wriggles when she’s spying on Nick at the beginning. It wriggles like hell when he confronts her after her press conference.

Not here. Doesn’t move. It’s a great, clearly intentional animation choice that tells a close observer (or more likely, a repeat viewer) that she’s completely unafraid.

She trusts him.

I could write a whole other post about how well-scripted this movie is, how every scene is doing half a dozen different things, but the way the personal and the professional come together here, the way the threads of prejudice and friendship and the police case all tie together in this moment. It’s good shit.

This is basically where things end, in terms of character development, but we get a bunch more shots of them clearly adoring each other:

So there it is.

To sum up, certainly not suggesting this movie invented “characters liking each other,” or anything like that. But it goes above and beyond in portraying a friendship that’s not just one born of circumstance, one that’s authentic and unmistakably loving. Characters who enjoy spending time with each other, regardless of what’s going on around them.

I hope everyone is able to experience friendships like that. I absolutely treasure the few I have.

Appendix: The Shipping Thing

I hope I’ve made all this ship-agnostic, which was my intention. I personally like the ship, and I think the reason it resonates with people is because that love and trust and closeness is clearly there, and a romantic relationship creates a lot more easy opportunities for dialing those things up even higher.

I would also argue, if pressed, that the amount of teasing and physicality that happens reads as pretty flirty. If they were humans I knew in real life, I’d definitely think there was something going on there. But I��m an American, where touching and emotional intimacy tends to be read as romantic. Also, animals are a lot more cuddly than humans. So who knows? I think it’s perfectly reasonable to read them as platonic friends until the end of time.

But, one way or another, they love each other a lot. Shout out to this, one of the most emotionally rewarding relationships I’ve ever seen in a cartoon.

#zootopia #zootropolis #zootopia takes #judy hopps #nick wilde #disney

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laraslandlockedblues · 5 years

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Ok actually I know the tags on my gif post I just did said I wasn’t sure when I’d be back, but I’m feeling strangely articulate tonight so here we go. Long-winded under the cut.

TL;DR - Real life is (and will continue to be) a busy bitch, a writer’s ego is a fragile thing, and my Lightning Struck series (Cullen/Evelyn) can now be considered on indefinite hiatus.

Hi! Yes, I’m alive and well and I really do appreciate the messages asking if I was all right and checking on me. You’re all too sweet and kind, and I’m so grateful for each and every one of you. Keep that in mind as this ramble continues, please.

This has been a weird year already, and it’s only March. Normally I’d be like “IT’S ALREADY MARCH?!” but no, this year...It’s only March. That’s how I’ve been feeling.

January started off with a weird mood for me. Over the holidays I had the usual family stress and blahness that comes with adulthood, but a few fandom things happened too that put me into a rather...difficult headspace, shall we say. For one thing, I will say I’ve noticed I’m not the only one who’s pointed out that it feels like the fandom is dying. And it is. Which is sad. I feel like I only just got here - I’ve played DA for years but I only really started to interact with its fandom in late 2017, so for me it was still all fresh and new and exciting. Seeing that die down, compounded with the Tumblr wank, especially, was really disappointing.

As a creator, too, it was hard not to take that personally. It was hard not to take people moving on to other fandoms and interests and things as an indictment on my work. Rational brain knew that that was the problem, rational me knew that we were all just moving on because other things were catching our interest. It’s natural. But dumb, idiot writer brain was struggling with the fact that I was feeling like I was screaming into the void.

What bothered me more was that I even cared. I never once wanted to care about that. I always preach writing for oneself, and that’s why I write. But I hated the fact that for a time I’d gotten so much feedback that I noticed its absence when it died down a little. And that’s not anyone’s fault, I’m not begging for comments or feedback, seriously. Again, rational me was shrugging and still wanted to write for me because it was fun and I enjoy it, but the fragile writer ego we all carry around inside us took a hit and began to doubt.

It stopped being fun. Especially because it wasn’t necessarily a total lack of feedback - it was, for me, a lack of feedback on what I was actually, currently working on. Over the holidays for some reason I began to get comments on WIPs that I hadn’t updated in ages - asking me for updates. Now, everyone has their own opinion on those sorts of comments, so this is only my own, and take it with a grain of salt and everything I just mentioned above.

It sucked. It absolutely, 100% sucked. Seeing the email notification that I got a comment would bring me so much joy - only to open it to see that it was a comment on something I hadn’t written for in a long time asking me when I’d feel like providing more content for that fic again. I began to feel like fic was a transaction and I was piling up debts. I started to feel like I owed fandom and readers what they wanted, instead of doing this for the reason I started in the first place - for myself.

I know that Rylen is niche. I know that fics that have very little to do with canon are niche. I know that Abby isn’t always super likable. I know that John is off-putting because he’s such a morally ambiguous OC who has nothing to do with DA and makes really shit decisions. I know all of that, and I’ve never expected any of those fics to get any sort of response, so the fact that they’ve gotten the response that they have still blows my mind and makes me insanely, insanely happy. And so I hated that I felt ungrateful, and that I was doubting my work, and that writing and fandom was beginning to feel like a labor and not something I loved.

The more I noticed I was struggling with working on updates, the more I started to think a break might be in order. When some RL stuff finally cropped up, the fact that I was sort of forced into a break was a blessing in disguise, to be honest. I leaned into the skid and let myself step back to reevaluate why I do this and what I want to get out of it. I fell into a new fandom and worked on random pieces of writing for it, which I threw into the voids of ao3 on a second account and only shared for myself and a few friends who were also falling into that fandom with me. I rediscovered the joy of writing and not caring what response I get. I reignited my love of crafting a story a certain way because I wanted to and not because I thought it was where anyone else thought it should go.

I remembered why I love writing in the first place - for myself.

And with that, I finally began to let go of some things, and let myself mull over decisions I’d been putting off or avoiding. I shrugged off the stress of expectation and “owing” anyone my time or effort, and I’m finally back to enjoying myself and my writing, free of doubt.

With that, I have some news, good and bad. The bad news first - my Cullen muse has left the building. I have waited, and hoped, and tried, but at some point he walked out the door and he hasn’t made an appearance since. That isn’t to say that I don’t still love his character or content about him, but personally, I can no longer write his POV or romance. The ability to do so has eluded me for months now, but I’ve accepted this sad truth at long last. Unless he’s trading banter with Rylen or Abby, his muse is no longer whispering in my ear. And that makes me sad, and for all I know he’ll reemerge some day, ready to help me write again. For now, though, that isn’t possible. Which does, unfortunately, mean that my Cullen/Evelyn WIPs are currently either abandoned or on an indefinite hiatus (I’ve tagged them appropriately on ao3 if you’re curious). If I do manage to return to them, I expect to only focus on Moments Passed and Miss Grey. As for what I’ll do about Beautiful Disaster...I’m not quite certain yet.

It did also mean that I was able to let go of something that had bothered me for a while as well. I’m almost positive no one noticed since it’s been kind of off radar for a while, but - my fic What Are the Odds has been orphaned. I’m still proud of it as a fic, but it came with a lot of baggage and my Cullen/Evelyn pairing was just ever so slightly OOC to the point that comments on it made me cringe. I’m a firm believer in not deleting, and so off to the fandom as an orphaned work it went, to be enjoyed without me having to be aware of it at all.

Now, the good news is - I do 100% still plan on writing Abby/Rylen. Their muses are still there and whispering to me, and I definitely want to continue working on the WIPs I have for them. At the moment After Rain might be slow to update (need to figure out how I’m navigating some canon plot to get me from point A to B to C to D and on). But I plan on trying to finish it as well as the others that I have for them. Abby/Ry live on, because I absolutely love them so much, and the idea of writing for them is back to bringing me joy.

I cannot make guarantees on update speed for the foreseeable future, possibly for the rest of the year. Currently RL continues to be a shitshow, as I was reminded today, and writing more than a sentence here or there has been difficult. In a few months I will also be moving, and once at my new destination I actually have a Big Project (a writing one I hope to be able to share here, if people are still around/Tumblr is still a thing) that I intend to make my full time focus. My goal has always been to be a writer, and while fanfic has been an amazing way to explore my writing style/storytelling/character voice, I have plans to get published. I’ll have a better opportunity to put those plans into realistic action later this year, which I’m actually really, insanely excited about.

If you have made it this far, THANK YOU. I love this fandom, and I’ve met so many wonderful, lovely, supportive, talented people in it and I have missed you all dearly during my time away. In no way was this a call out post directed at anyone in particular, and in no way was this a “woe is me, please give me attention” cry for help. I’ve just had a lot of thoughts and feelings during this break, and I actually wanted to sort of vocalize them because: 1) wow I already feel better after doing so, and 2) to let other writers know it’s 100% valid to need to take a break or occasionally get in your head about needing validation/feedback/wonder why we do this when it just feels like screaming into a fathomless void. It’s natural and normal and totally human, and if you’re feeling that way, find someone supportive to help you through and take a step back. Everything will be waiting there for you when you’re ready for it. And remember - do it for yourself because it’s something you enjoy.

#lara rambles #long post #do n/ot/ reblog #seriously please #no reblobbies #thank you for the love while i was away #i'll try to be around more often now #xx

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pluckyredhead · 5 years

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Pls share more about Heroes in Crisis??

OKAY SO.

The pitch for Heroes in Crisis (well, the pitch to readers) was that there was going to be this place called Sanctuary, set up by the Justice League, where heroes could come and get therapy for their trauma - but something terrible happens there, and the heroes have to deal with it. The stars were going to be the trinity plus Booster Gold and Harley Quinn. It’s by Tom King and Clay Mann.

[SPOILERS AHEAD!]

So, okay, first of all, I was...concerned by King choosing to use Booster as a major character because a) WHAT IF HIS TRAUMA WAS THAT TED DIED AGAIN??? (it’s not, Ted’s fine) and b) he really shat the bed when he wrote Booster in his Batman run. I mean, just terrible.

(Short version: Booster decides to go back in time and save Bruce Wayne’s parents as a wedding gift for Batman even though four fucking seconds prior to that he was in a Superman storyline where he was like “Superman you can’t change the past, sorry bro!” and also in this continuity I’m not sure Bruce and Booster have ever MET. Anyway he created a dystopian AU where Selina is feral and kills Alfred and Batman is...some other guy who kills the Waynes, so AU Bruce chains Booster up in the basement for a year and tortures him until he agrees to bring the Waynes back and the whole experience drives Booster “insane” but he manages to restore the original timeline in the end? It’s a wildly illogical storyline that treats Booster like a more profound idiot than I think any other writer I’ve seen, and that’s saying something.)

So anyway, Heroes in Crisis starts in media res with shit already having gone down at Sanctuary, which is a fine way to start a story usually, but “Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman have an old country house somewhere remote staffed by therapy robots that we’ve never mentioned” is...KIND OF A LEAP. (I will say that Bruce deciding that the best way to provide therapy is via robots and surveillance footage that is immediately deleted is VERY in character. Bruce talk to a human please.)

Anyway a bunch of characters are dead: Roy Harper, white Wally West (because there are two Wallys now), Blue Jay, Hot Spot, Lagoon Boy, Steel (one of the Henshaws, not John Henry Irons), and Poison Ivy. So I guess the killer really fucking hated redheads? Also I’m weirdly sad about Lagoon Boy even though I hadn’t thought about him for at least 10 years. Also I find it very very hard to believe that either Ivy or Wally will stay dead for even a full 12 months. But way to bury your gays, King! (Ivy, not Wally. Afaik.)

Meanwhile Booster and Harley are on the run because they are the primary suspects but are also both convinced the other did it? Well, Harley is convinced Booster did it, Booster hasn’t strung together a full sentence in two whole issues. Like at one point he jovially lets slip to Barry that Wally is dead. LOL WHOOPSIE BOOSTER’S AN IDIOT I GUESS. Also he “was crazy” but he’s better now because that’s how mental health works! After FINALLY resetting his continuity so that the most traumatic thing in his backstory (Ted’s death) hadn’t happened, King broke him in someone else’s book for fun! I HAVE BEEN STANNING BOOSTER GOLD FOR TOO MANY YEARS TO LET THIS STAND.

So basically we were told it would be a story about trauma and healing, but it’s actually a whodunnit with the trinity trying to solve the murders while Harley and Booster scamper around in the background. Because what you want for a story about grisly mass murder is to center it on two comedy characters.

The only concession to the whole “trauma” thing is these talking heads pages where the characters talk about all the terrible things they’ve gone through, except...they’re not real things? Like, Bruce goes into a whole thing about how all his kids have died, except...they haven’t, in this continuity. (There’s a great post about it here.) Superman’s like “It’s so hard to know whether I’m Superman or Clark!” which...isn’t a thing with Superman, and never has been. Wonder Woman’s like “.................I’m good, actually” but...with a sad face? (Like, her Traumatic Moment {TM} on the variant covers is killing Max Lord, which a) DID! NOT! HAPPEN! IN! THIS! CONTINUITY! and b) she didn’t mind, SHE’S AN AMAZON WARRIOR.)

(Oh also Harley is WAY overpowered. She takes out THE WHOLE TRINITY!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!! SHE IS A CLOWN WHO CAN DO HANDSTANDS, SHE CANNOT DEFEAT WONDER WOMAN. (King fucking loves this move, I’m still mad about the page in his Batman run where Catwoman defeated Barry and both Wallys at once.))

So, in conclusion:

1. We were told we’d get a story about trauma and mental health but it’s actually a murder mystery.

2. We were told it wasn’t a Capital C Crisis but at least 7 characters are dead, including a black teenage boy and a queer woman.

3. The “trauma” the A-list heroes are whining about isn’t canon and has nothing to do with the plot.

4. We’re apparently supposed to believe that Batman would believe for even a hot Gotham second that Harley or Booster would kill at least seven people including Ivy.

5. Booster is wildly OOC.

But, I mean, it sure is pretty:

#heroes in crisis #booster gold #harley quinn #I'M MAD #tawghasa

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